


Steve Rogers Sucks - So Says Endgame Bucky Barnes

by asrewrites



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Abandonment, Angst, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Bad Ending, Friendship, Gen, Marvel Universe, Marvel why'd you do us that way?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-03
Updated: 2019-07-03
Packaged: 2020-06-03 12:28:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19464004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asrewrites/pseuds/asrewrites
Summary: I really enjoyed Endgame but the biggest flaw for me was the way they ended this friendship.





	Steve Rogers Sucks - So Says Endgame Bucky Barnes

Bucky wasn’t sure why he was even there. He wasn’t a part of the team. No one wanted him to join in the ‘mission’. He watched them all put on their new time suits and get ready to go back in time to return all the things that they had promised to so that they wouldn’t upset the timeline. But he was pretty sure Steve was up to something, something that made Bucky uneasy and he was starting to remember so many more bits and pieces of the young Steve Rogers even as he watched this one as he stared off into space.

He knew people were hurting. So many had died and most had been returned, but Natasha was sorely missed. She had gone to Vormir with Barton to get a stone and she hadn’t returned. Barton had related that they met a red skulled apparition or guardian there and it had told them that they would have to sacrifice the thing they loved the most. Barton insisted that he’d tried to take the leap, but that Natasha had caught him, tangled him in one of her rappelling hook lines and she’d gone so far as to force him to let go of her by kicking off from the wall to throw his grip. In the end, she’d died at the bottom of a cliff. Sacrificed herself to save the world.

To him, that sounded like the Romanov he'd known or the pieces of her that he could recall. She loved life and others to an extent, but having only herself for so long had made her the kind of person that was not only capable and self-reliant but also very much in love with herself for those traits. If that was the key, killing what you loved, then even if Barton had succeeded in hitting the bottom, Romanov would have had to go too since she was the only one there with a love to really lose. Bucky was sure that Barton cared for Romanov, his tears and his words proved that loudly enough. But his true loves were already long gone and he was essentially just ending his own suffering with his sacrifice as far as Bucky could tell.

Natasha though, she had always loved herself best. She was the person Bucky could recall best and from what he overheard from the others as they talked and mourned her, he wasn’t entirely wrong about her. It may have been a secret, well hidden in her actions, but as any good spy would tell you, you had to love yourself most to do the work. Nothing and no one could be cared for more, to do that was an easy death sentence as it would steal your focus, break your nerve and kill your will. Bucky knew all about that happening as he was warring with that as he watched Steve.

He wasn’t surprised when Steve announced that he was going to do the return of the stones himself. No one else needed to go, no one else needed to worry about Pim particles. It seemed that most people concerned were more than happy to not have to go and they eagerly took off their suits and relaxed into the idea that Steve would be back in a flash. After all, Banner had worked it all out. But Bucky knew better. Rogers had no intention of coming back in a flash. He was focused on something else, someone else. And that was in the past he was going back to.

Thing is, Bucky knew better than the rest. The set of Steve’s jaw, the way he didn’t make direct eye contact. How he kept talking to everyone looking slightly off to the left or right of their face. Bucky figured Steve was probably looking at their ears. He’d done that a lot with his mother when he was telling her what she wanted or needed to hear but not necessarily what he was going to do. There was also the fact that Steve was avoiding him. Stealthy as he could be, Rogers was no spy and his training was lacking. He’d probably spent too long not needing to use any of those skills and had lost the knack after the loss to Thanos. Now he could have benefited from the upkeep of what Bucky was sure were things Natasha had taken pains to teach him. Still, Bucky was a bit glad that he didn’t have to work too hard to follow Steve now since his heart was heavy with dread.

It had always seemed to Bucky that Steve, while a spunky little punk, had chafed at being the little guy as much as he had relished getting into fights to prove he could hold his own. Now he’d more than proven it. With Thor’s hammer and an army of people freshly returned and never gone behind him, he’d helped destroy the Universe’s biggest threat and make everything right. Now Bucky could see the thing he’d always wondered about taking over his oldest friend, the need to be normal. Steve had hated being sickly, small and weak. He’d always wanted to prove that he was more than that and he had, at long last. Not that the world hadn’t already crowned him a hero and not that Steve hadn’t had a life that was a close to normal as could be had at the time after the first war with Thanos. 

Still, Bucky new what was going on. He could see the far off stare and the way Rogers’ hand never stopped playing with that compass in his pocket. Bucky’d heard rumours that Steve and Natasha had been a couple after the snap, that they’d relied on and comforted each other, but it must not have been love. If Steve had truly loved Natasha he wouldn’t be so focused on that woman from the war. Peggy Carter had died long before Thanos came. Steve had told him that himself; but she was the one that got away and if Bucky knew anything it was that Rogers was a completest. He’d gotten his wish to defeat Thanos and now Rogers had a new wish.

Maybe he’d had it since the group found out that time travel could happen. Maybe he’d always had the dream in his heart that he could have had a life with Peggy if he’d walked away from the war and stopped trying to win every fight he came across. Bucky was pretty certain that Steve Rogers had realized, and maybe it had been only recently but Rogers still found out, that there’s always another fight. Someone or something was always coming and trying to fuck up life. Steve hadn’t liked losing to Thanos and had hated living with it. Bucky’d seen that on the field himself. The little punk was out there trying to get himself killed and despite his death wish he’d survived and the world had won.

Now Bucky was sure Steve was going to disappear. The hardest part was that he’d always known Steve would leave him behind. Hell, he’d been trying to do that since the serum and the war. He didn’t need Bucky, and he’d been fine fighting after Hydra had taken his best friend and turned him into their crude knock-off version of Steve Rogers. Yea, Bucky’d heard that tossed around a lot lately too. He wasn’t considered stable or part of the team. He wasn’t highly liked by Tony Stark or his family he assumed. Now that he was back no one paid him much mind and no one much interacted with him either. That meant it was easy for him to gather the information he’d used to piece together the plan he watched Steve putting into action. 

It hurt more than he thought it would when Rogers said the old familiar “Don’t do anything stupid.” line that they’d used on each other a million times. It hurt because it confirmed to Bucky that Steve was focused on the past and that he was on a mission to get what he wanted. If there was one thing that had become painfully clear to Bucky since Steve showed up in that facility in the war, it was that Rogers did whatever he could to get what he wanted and nothing would stand in his way. Not even his best friend.

Sure he took the stones and the weapons, he took his compass too. Rogers wasn’t coming back here, not the one Bucky knew now. The friend that had moved mountains to find him and get him help, was going to get into a machine and leave him behind. Steve Rogers was going to execute a great escape and no one saw it coming, except the one person that Steve should have told. It didn't matter that they were old friends, or that they had a history, had always helped each other out. The part that was the hardest to accept, that kept echoing in Bucky’s mind as he watched his friend disappear from the pad of the machine and then Wilson and Banner freak out when he didn't reappear; was that Steve had insisted he was with him ‘til the end of the line.

“You’re my friend.” echoed through his mind as he turned to look away and spotted the older man on the bench nearby. He’d heard the man approach but didn’t think much of it as he’d been watching his friend disappear. Bucky was sure as he directed Sam to the bench that the man sitting there was the person that Steve had gone off to become. The one who had left him behind without a word, a thought or simple goodbye. Steve would never ever have said he was wrong, never admit he’d tried to do something he didn’t think through and Bucky knew now would be no different. 

Even as Steve handed Sam the shield Bucky knew his friend wouldn’t speak to him, wouldn’t look his way to acknowledge the things he left behind because he’d have to stop and think about what he’d done and Steve Rogers was not that kind of man. Steve Rogers was a doer. He did things then he suffered the consequences, but more than anything he avoided the hard truths of those affected by his decisions. Steve Rogers was the kind of man who would fight to stop evil, but he wouldn’t look into the eyes of his dearest friend and say goodbye, or even hello if it meant he had to acknowledge that he had ever made a mistake, or failed them in some way. Rogers never looked for the other side of the equation, he was interested in being right and looked only for confirmation of that.

At the end of the day, Bucky knew Steve had saved him from Hydra because he felt responsible for Hydra getting its hands on him in the first place. But Steve couldn’t ‘fix’ what had happened and in the end, Bucky had been adopted by Wakanda and left there alone to live his life because Steve had done his job and saved his friend. Now, well this was kind of the same thing. Steve had done his job and saved, or brought back his friends and he was done with them. He didn’t need them or want them to remind him of his failures so he left to go succeed at something else that he wanted and never mind the fallout. That really was what Steve Rogers did. He walked away from the hard truths until he needed help, then he’d show up and make nice before taking off again. 

Talking to Sam was necessary, he had to give that man a purpose. Bucky was certain the second Steve disappeared from that machine that if he’d come back it wasn’t going to be for him. So this was no surprise. He didn’t want Steve’s life, he never had. He’d wanted to be Steve back in the day, so he didn’t have to go off to war. He’d have given anything to be a little less able-bodied and to have been denied the call to arms. War was hell and he lived with that day in and day out. He’d never wanted that for Steve and maybe this was a kindness, a memory that they could both share. Bucky had never wanted to fight and Steve wasn’t going to pass that responsibility onto him with the shield. It was the one thing that would keep Bucky in the fight and damn him to everything he’d never wanted in this life. At least he could be happy for that thoughtfulness, for this one last kindness from his old friend who never said goodbye and left him behind to figure out this world and find a place in it on his own.


End file.
